This blog post was inspired by a recent report of a Database Analyst at American Express stealing Credit Card data.

It’s amazing how many companies still follow a mainly “perimeter security” approach when it comes to controlling access to sensitive information—their focus is on network security using firewalls, advanced authentication options, and so on. Even with such measures, it’s very common to setup strong barriers to the outside world but very little by way of internal limits; most internal people have some level of access to servers that store and process sensitive data.

Well, there’s nothing wrong with pre-screening your stuff, or having access to the sensitive information, or setting up advanced …

This is the 153rd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

Let’s start by revisiting a perennial issue with Craig Mullins addresses with the question, Are DBAs Obsolete? “Before we go any further, let me briefly answer the question posed in the title of this blog entry: ‘No Way!’,” writes Craig. “Every time I hear this it makes me shake my head sadly as I regard just how gullible IT publications can be.” He argues that an Internet-paced attitude regarding the work of the DBA may be the first culprit in the devaluation of the DBA’s work.

Oracle

Dion Cho, the Oracle Performance Storyteller, …

If so, you should check out OpenSQLCamp 2009, European Edition. November last year, the home of OpenSQL Camp was Charlottesville, VA, but now it is time to have something a bit more local. OpenSQL Camp will take place Saturday 22nd and Sunday 23rd of August, in St. Augustin, Germany, so it could do for a nice August getaway to Germany.

It’s not really the biggest of cities, but then again, that is part of the charm, going to some small city and learning more about databases.
In case you do happen to be curious, feel free to check out the list of proposed sessions, although it is not complete, it does give a overview of what to expect.

I for one am looking forward to a European event, as it seems like most things is based in the US, and that means travel time will be less and no …

Welcome to the 152nd edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

PostgreSQL

Courtesy the United States PostgreSQL Association, the big news: PostgreSQL 8.4 Released!.

Josh Berkus writes, “Now that PostgreSQL 8.4 is out, I thought I’d write a little about my favorite 8.4 feature. As Mr. Performance Whack-a-Mole, what makes me happy about 8.4 is the ability to whack moles faster … which is why I’m very fond of pg_stat_statements.”

On ad’s corner, …

A short time ago I posted how I was Using XtraDB Backup to backup InnoDB. Overall, the blog post was positive, but experiences that others have had (and commented to on that blog post) have made me want to put out another short article about using XtraDB backup.

The first few points remain the same — the backup process is stable, we were able to use the binaries without compiling, and using Innobackupex as the wrapper script, analogous to Innobackup.pl.

However, we did figure out why Xtrabackup had to be run as the mysql user:

Xtrabackup writes to the data dictionary file (ibdata1, for example). We have not examined if it also writes to the data and index files (still ibdata1 by default, or the .ibd files when using innodb_file_per_table). [EDIT: The authors of Xtrabackup have commented below as to why the write occurs: …

Hi All!

This year, the International Free Software Forum celebrated its 10th anniversary. It happened last week in Porto Alegre.

Pythian presented a session on Thursday called 8 Rules for Designing More Secure Applications with MySQL.

As promised, here are the slides we used on that session: 8 Simple Rules to Design Secure Apps with MySQL (PDF).

Cheers!

Welcome to the 151st edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs. We’re going to take a fast tour through the best blogs from the week gone by, beginning this time, with Oracle.

Jonathan Lewis writes, “It occurred to me recently that I might be making casual use of terms that weren’t necessarily very well known to the less experienced user. So I’ve decided to build a glossary of terms – and I’ll try to add to it from time to time whenever I have a few minutes.”

Jonathan might want to add “Method R” to the glossary. Cary Millsap was making it understood, …

The July meeting of the Boston MySQL User Group will feature Eric Day, a prominent Drizzle developer, talking about Drizzle and Gearman:

In this talk we will discuss two growing technologies: Drizzle and Gearman.

We will explain what the Drizzle project is, what we aim to accomplish, and an overview of where we are at. We will also be introducing the fundamentals of how to leverage Gearman, an open-source, distributed job queuing system. Gearman’s generic design allows it to be used as a building block for almost any use - from speeding up your website to building your own Map/Reduce cluster. We will tie Drizzle and Gearman together and demonstrate how they work in a custom Search Engine application.

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Here is the URL for MIT’s Map with the location of this building:
…

About six months ago, the question of storing images in a database came up. This is one of my favorite topics, and has many database-agnostic parts.

Personally, I think “tell me about storing images in a database” is actually a great interview question, because you will be able to see the difference between someone who has just memorized “what’s right” versus someone who is really thinking. It also helps you see how someone will communicate — if they just say “NEVER do it, it’s as bad as crossing the streams!” then they are a type of person that gives you a short answer, without much explanation, and without many nuances. (That may be what you are looking for, but usually you want someone who gives reasons for why they strongly feel one way or another).

Consider the following cases:

What about storing …

This is the 149th edition of Log Buffer, the weekly review of database blogs.

MySQL

Let’s begin with the big-picture stuff. Jeremy Zawodny laid out his view of the state of MySQL in Linux Magazine’s blog, noting the rough transition between versions 5.0 and 5.1, the status of storage engines, and outside contributions.

Like Baron Schwartz’s Maatkit, for example. Baron announced this week that he is writing a book about Maatkit, and also …